Over the past few years, 'dystopia' has become a word with increasing cultural currency, this book examines the development of the dystopian genre and argues that dystopian fictions do not merely mirror what is happening in the world: their narrative conventions actually affect the ways in which we understand the international. Whether we are discussing NSA surveillance, genetic modification and food distribution or authoritarian government, the narrative conventions and generic tropes of dystopian fiction have become an important cultural means and referent by which we grapple with...